Unsuitable Men (14 page)

“Don’t be sorry, Tracy Ann,” her mother said, as she always did when Tracy apologized. “Just do better.”

She hung up and Tracy felt the tension leave her shoulders. Talking to her mother always made her feel like she’d failed in some fundamental but unspecified manner. Today at least, her failure was clear: she was a bad daughter for having not come to see Malcolm, for not returning calls, for avoiding going back to Georgia to join the vigil at the bedside of a man who, however damaged, would probably outlive them all.

Tracy turned to more pleasant matters, finally choosing to wear her emerald green, stretched silk, sleeveless
Akris
dress with the jeweled neckline and ribbed pleated skirt that stopped just above her knees. With it she would wear her nude pumps, the ones that made her legs look incredible. Having settled on her outfit, she jumped in the shower. Her hair, which she had allowed to go practically wild lately, would take some work so she’d better start now before it was time to drive out to Jersey.

Across the already crowded room, when Tracy walked in, she honed in on one person and one person only. Meghan. Holding a wineglass and wearing a pretty white blouson top and black pencil pant, she was talking and laughing with Robyn Crandall, one of Shawn’s attorneys. Next to her, but engrossed in a separate conversation was Brendan. But he was
next to her
.

“You made it.”

Tracy turned toward Riley’s voice and hugged her friend. Riley looked amazing to have just given birth a month ago, but her boobs seemed to have gotten larger.

“Breastfeeding,” Riley said following her eyes and shrugging. “You can’t imagine how thrilled Shawn is.”

“With the breastfeeding or the breasts.”

Riley thought for a moment. “Both. Come see Cullen.”

There was no way to graciously admit that at the moment she was more interested in staying downstairs and watching to see whether she could figure out whether Meghan came here with
her
man. Yes, yes, so he wasn’t
officially
her man, and he’d never told her he wasn’t seeing Meghan any longer, in fact she’d told herself that she accepted that he probably was. But even if that was the case, did he have to
rub her face in it?

And after this morning, when they’d barely wanted to get out of bed long enough to go see their godson blessed . . .

“So here’s one for the books,” Riley said as she and Tracy ascended the stairs to the nursery. “The man who’s been badgering me to get someone to help around the house suddenly doesn’t want anyone here at all. Claims we can do it all on our own.”

“He’s just being overprotective,” Tracy
said,
her mind elsewhere.

“But what the hell? It’s not like I’m superwoman, or anything. So we’re actually fighting about this now. Except now I’m the one who wants to hire someone if you can believe that.”

“You two
thrive
on fighting,” Tracy said impatiently. “So please stop acting like you don’t enjoy it.”

Riley stopped and looked at her. “What the hell’s gotten into
you
?”

Tracy looked at her and sighed. “I’m sorry. My mother called just before I got here. I don’t know why I’m taking this out on other people . . .”

“No, it’s okay.” Riley squeezed her shoulder. “I know I’ve become one of those women who only ever talk about their husband and their baby. And you’ve got a lot going on as well . . .”

You have no idea.

“. . .
so
tell me; how’s Malcolm?”

“He’s stable, I guess. My mother wants me to come home to visit though. Which you know I would rather stab myself in the eye with a pencil than do.”

Riley laughed. “So you’re all out of excuses not to, I’m guessing.”

“I used you and the baby as my excuse this morning but she wasn’t buying it.”

“You can use me anytime,” Riley joked.

When they got to the nursery, Cullen was fast asleep on his back, still wearing his charming little christening gown, breathing long, quiet breaths. Each day he was getting cuter and rounder with the face of a cherub and a beautiful honey-colored complexion; a real golden boy. Tracy smiled in spite of her earlier annoyance. It was impossible not to smile when looking at her little guy.

“I just want to suck on those cheeks,” she whispered.

“I can’t stop kissing them,” Riley admitted. “I look at him and feel like I invented this kind of love. Like no one has
ever
loved a kid in the history of motherhood as much as I love him. But every mother probably feels that way.”

“Hah. I doubt
my
mother ever did,” Tracy said dryly.

“Tracy,” Riley turned away from the crib. “Your mother loves you. She’s just hard on you because she wants you to be better than she thinks she was.”

“That’s not a very high standard. As much as she likes to pretend she was perfect.”

Riley seemed not to know what to say to that. Tracy sympathized. Riley’s own relationship with her mother could not be more different than Tracy’s
with
her mother. How
could
she understand?

“Anyway,” Tracy said, putting her out of her misery. “Let’s go down and enjoy the party. When did Brendan and Meghan get here?” she added casually.

“Pretty early on. I came downstairs and they were already here,” Riley shrugged.

That bastard
, Tracy thought. Then she smiled at Riley and followed her out of the room and back down the stairs.

The house was becoming more crowded now, with about a hundred and fifty guests or so, and Tracy no longer saw Meghan or Brendan. Riley drifted off to greet her new guests while Tracy speculated that maybe they’d stolen off someplace for some alone time. The very idea of it made her chest constrict. Rather than examine why, or what that feeling meant, she wandered over to grab herself some finger food.

And that was another thing. She was easily a size six now. Not her fighting weight for going into the fall. Everyone knew you gained weight when the weather cooled down, and she did not want to gain weight.

“You look amazing in that dress.”

His voice, right at the shell of her ear, caused her stomach to flutter. For a moment, Tracy forgot that she was angry and when she turned to look at him and it got far worse. Lately, every single time she looked at him, she noticed something else that made him damn near impossible to resist. Like the single dimple he had in his left cheek.

“I hope it comes off easily though,” Brendan said against her neck, his fingers scanning the zipper at the back of her dress. “Because later, I’ma
tear
that ass u. . .”

“I haven’t seen Shawn yet,” she interrupted him, her face growing warm, not from embarrassment, but in spite of herself, from excitement. “Do you know where he is?”

“Someplace outside I think,” Brendan said.

He was still looking at her with that appraising look, the one that told her he wanted to be doing very, very naughty things to her. Things she wanted him to do. But he was such a
fucking asshole.
To do what they’d done this morning and then bring Meghan here?

“I’m going to look for him,” Tracy said. She rushed off before he could say anything else.

Funny that Brendan wasn’t the rapper instead of Shawn. He was extraordinarily . . . verbal. In bed and out, he liked to talk about what he was doing, what he wanted to do to her and what he wanted her to do to him; sometimes using language that was so frank and so
coarse
it made her blush and wonder if she should instead be offended. Maybe she wasn’t offended because his repertoire was so vast and his range so broad. One day they might have raw, crazy, Olympic sex, punctuated by dirty talk and the next he was so tender, and said such beautiful things, she cried as she climaxed. He had her head spinning like a top and she didn’t know how to make it stop. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

But tonight; tonight she was
livid
. Because he had come to the party with Meghan. The last thing she remembered was them planning to meet back at his place later tonight; so how, why would he bring Meghan? What was his plan, exactly? To take Meghan home and kiss her a sweet goodbye at the door, then come home and take
her
spread-eagled across his living room floor?

She found Shawn outside, talking
to
few of his business associates whose names she forgot as soon as she was introduced. Tracy hugged him, making nice for a few minutes as was her duty to do as his son’s godmother. But that wasn’t the only reason. The truth was, she’d warmed to Shawn considerably over the past month, and for his part, he seemed not to be simply tolerating her anymore. She dared say he was beginning to like her a little bit.

“So Riley told me you don’t want to get someone to help out around the house,” she said casually.

Shawn shook his head. “No, what I told her was we’ll get someone to help out with the house, but I don’t want anyone else looking after the baby. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.”

There was a question in his tone, and Tracy tried not to smile. Unless she was mistaken, Shawn was
asking for her opinion
.
It was official, hell had frozen over.

“Well, it depends. I mean, she wants to go back to work soon, right? So when she leaves, don’t you think it’ll be strange to just leave the baby with someone who you never got a chance to see in action, taking care of him while Riley was around to supervise?”

“I was thinking she’d take him to work with her,” Shawn said.

Tracy couldn’t help herself. She laughed out loud. But Shawn didn’t look amused.

“She’s the boss,” he shrugged. “She can do whatever the hell she wants.”

“Only if she’s prepared for everyone who works for her to ask for the same privilege,” Tracy pointed out.

Shawn rubbed his chin. “Or she could just work from home from now on.”

“She would hate that and you know it,” Tracy said quietly.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Hell was getting colder by the second.

“So I guess you’ve got to give her this one,” Tracy said wryly.

Shawn smiled and shook his head. “She gets ‘em all, Tracy.”

“Tracy?”

She turned to see who had spoken her name, and her smile faltered when Meghan approached.

“Meghan. Hello,” she said.

Meghan leaned in to kiss her cheek and Shawn’s. Funnily, it was her kissing Shawn that was more bothersome. These were
her
friends, and Brendan was her . . . whatever he was. And where had this woman come from anyway? Meghan had only known Shawn and Riley for a hot minute and here she was acting like a long lost friend or something. And then, to make matters much, much worse, here came Brendan.

Tracy sighed. If she had to watch them together, she was going to lose her shit, right here in the middle of this high-profile party.

Luckily, Brendan seemed more interested in talking to the men Shawn had been conversing with but she sensed that he was hyper-aware, of her or of Meghan she wasn’t sure. Probably of Meghan. The
real
girlfriend.

“So, I missed you at the church,” Tracy said to Meghan, her voice sweet as pie.

She knew full well that Shawn and Riley had limited attendance at the church to very close friends and family. There had been only Lorna, Brendan, Tracy and two of Shawn’s cousins from Baltimore in attendance. Only the smallest nucleus of their inner circle.

“Oh, no I wasn’t at the church,” she said, oblivious
to
Tracy’s intent to embarrass her.

But Shawn had narrowed his eyes, sensing that something was afoot. He turned and exchanged a look with Brendan who in turn looked at her. Whatever. She didn’t read faces, or minds for that matter.

“Hmm,” Tracy said. “Now that I think about it, it was a small, intimate group.”

Meghan smiled, but looked a little unsure of
herself
for a moment, as though she sensed a change in tone but had no idea what might have caused it.

“Shawn can tell you more than I what it’s like,” Tracy continued. “Having just random people at important life events like that, and the next thing you know, everything that was said winds up in a tabloid somewhere.”

Meghan nodded and looked at Shawn. “I can imagine that must be difficult. Knowing who to trust.”

“No, you can’t imagine,” Tracy said. “When Riley was three months along, someone in her doctor’s office leaked it along with some made up story about her having a venereal disease. She cried for a week.”

“Well, I’m sure Riley knows that I would never . . .”

“Does she?” Tracy seized on the comment. “How does she know? She doesn’t know you at
all
, Meghan. In fact, none of us do. Except for
maybe
Brendan.”